Health Expenditure Growth: Looking beyond the Average through Decomposition of the Full Distribution

Explanations of growth in health expenditures have restricted attention to the mean. We explain change throughout the distribution of expenditures, providing insight into how growth and its explanation differ along the distribution. We analyse Dutch data on actual health expenditures linked to hospital discharge and mortality registers. Full distribution decomposition delivers findings that would be overlooked by examination of changes in the mean alone. The growth in expenditures on hospital care is strongest at the middle of the distribution and is driven mainly by changes in the distributio... Mehr ...